Chile Slams World Bank Amid Charges of Political Bias

Source: New York Times

By Pascale Bonnefoy and Ernesto Londoño

Jan. 13, 2018

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile’s outgoing president, Michelle Bachelet, criticized the World Bank on Saturday after an economist said that her country’s poor showing in an influential survey of global business conditions may actually have reflected a political bias against her left-leaning government.

The outcry came after the bank’s chief economist, Paul Romer, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Friday that while Chile’s ranking has fallen in the bank’s yearly “Doing Business” report, which investors watch closely, “business conditions did not get worse in Chile” during the Bachelet era.

He added that he did not have “confidence in the integrity” of the data and methodology that led to Chile’s negative assessments and offered a “personal apology” to the country.

The statement has started a political firestorm in Chile, where the candidate from Ms. Bachelet’s leftist coalition was defeated in last month’s presidential election, a race in which economic policy was a decisive issue. Ms. Bachelet, who leaves office in March, was barred by term limits from seeking re-election.

3. Greg Palast wrote about the corrupt World Bank and its tactics back in 2001

The Globalizer Who Came In
From the Cold
Joe Stiglitz:
Today’s Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

by Greg Palast

SNIP
Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV's Newsnight about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted," and "not otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization."

Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance Strategy." There's an Assistance Strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's staff 'investigation' consists of close inspection of a nation's 5-star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for his 'voluntary' signature (I have a selection of these).

Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.

Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest 'briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.
SNIP